Greater Flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus): Facts and Habitat

Appearance: the palest flamingo

Adult greater flamingos look mostly whitish to very pale pink, much paler than the deep-pink American flamingo. The color shows best on the wings: the wing coverts are bright pinkish red and the flight feathers are black, so a flamingo that stretches or flies flashes a vivid red-and-black pattern.

The bill is pink with a small black tip, and sharply bent downward in the middle, a shape found only in flamingos. The legs and feet are entirely pink and the eye is pale yellow. Males and females look alike, though males are larger, with longer legs and a bigger bill.

Young birds are gray-brown with dark legs and a straight bill at hatching. They gradually turn paler and pinker, and most do not reach full adult plumage until about four years old. The color comes from carotenoid pigments in their food, explained in why flamingos are pink. Greater flamingos also rub pigment-rich oil from their preen gland onto their feathers in the breeding season, which makes them look pinker, a habit sometimes described as applying “make-up”.

How big is a greater flamingo?

The greater flamingo is the largest living flamingo. Relative to its body, it has extraordinarily long legs and neck.

Its close relative, the American flamingo, is similar in size but far more brightly colored. The lesser flamingo, which shares many African lakes with the greater, is much smaller and darker pink, with a dark red bill.

Habitat and range

Greater flamingos need large, shallow bodies of salty or alkaline water with soft mud and plenty of small invertebrates. They live in coastal lagoons, salt pans, river deltas, estuaries and inland salt lakes, many of them too salty for fish.

The species has a huge range across the Old World:

• Southern Europe: the Camargue in France, the Ebro Delta, Doñana and Fuente de Piedra in Spain, the Algarve in Portugal, Sardinia and other Italian wetlands, Greece and Turkey.
• Africa: coastal North Africa, the alkaline lakes of East Africa’s Rift Valley, southern Africa (for example Walvis Bay in Namibia and Etosha Pan), and West Africa.
• Asia: the Middle East and Persian Gulf, Central Asia as far north as Lake Tengiz in Kazakhstan, and the Indian subcontinent, especially the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, India, and the Mumbai coast.

A small feral colony, descended from escaped zoo birds, even breeds in western Germany near the Dutch border. Some greater flamingos are resident, while others travel long distances between wetlands, usually flying at night.

Diet and filter feeding

The greater flamingo is a filter feeder. It wades through shallow water, lowers its head between its legs and turns its bill upside down so that the bent upper jaw rests on the mud. Unusually for a bird, the upper jaw is the part that moves.

Inside the bill are rows of fine, comb-like plates called lamellae. The fleshy tongue pumps water and mud in and out of the bill several times a second, and the lamellae trap food while water and silt drain away. Flamingos stamp their feet and walk in small circles to stir up food from the bottom.

Compared with the lesser flamingo, which strains microscopic algae from the surface, the greater flamingo eats mainly small animals from the bottom: brine shrimp and other tiny crustaceans, midge and fly larvae, small snails and clams, worms, plus seeds (including rice in some areas) and algae. More detail is in what do flamingos eat?

Behavior and group displays

Greater flamingos are highly social and almost always live in flocks, which may hold tens of thousands of birds at the best lakes. Living in crowds helps them spot predators and keeps the colony in step for breeding.

Their best-known behavior is the group courtship display, often called flamingo dancing. Large groups march together with necks stretched upward, flick their heads from side to side, open their wings in sudden “wing salutes” and preen in unison. Studies in the Camargue have found that the complexity of a bird’s display increases with age until about 20 years old and then declines. The displays and their purpose are explained in why do flamingos dance?

Flamingos are noisy, with a deep, goose-like honking call. Resting birds often stand on one leg with the head tucked onto the back, which helps them save body heat.

Flight and movements

It surprises many people that such a long-legged bird is a strong flier. To take off, a flamingo runs across the water, flapping hard, until it has enough speed to lift off. In the air it flies with its neck stretched straight forward and its legs trailing behind, so it looks like a long pink cross, and flocks travel in lines or loose V shapes.

Greater flamingos usually move between wetlands at night, which helps them avoid eagles and other daytime predators. Ringing studies have shown that individual birds can travel between colonies hundreds or thousands of kilometers apart, for example between the Camargue, Spain, Sardinia, Tunisia and Turkey. This mixing means that flamingos of the western Mediterranean behave in many ways like one large, shared population. Birds also move away quickly when a lagoon dries out or becomes too salty, and return when conditions improve.

Reproduction and life cycle

Greater flamingos usually breed in dense colonies on islands or remote mudflats, where land predators cannot easily reach them. Unlike many long-lived birds, they generally choose a new partner each breeding season, and birds of similar age tend to pair up.

Both parents build a cone-shaped nest of mud, scraped together with the bill, with a shallow cup on top. The female lays a single chalky-white egg, and both parents incubate it for about 27–31 days. If the egg is lost early, a pair may lay a replacement.

Chicks hatch with gray down and a straight bill. For the first weeks both parents feed them crop milk, a nutritious fluid produced in the upper digestive tract. After about a week the chicks leave the nest and join large groups called crèches, guarded by a few adults, while the parents fly off to feed. Parents still find their own chick by its call. Young flamingos fly at about 10–11 weeks old. Birds can breed from about three years of age, but most females do not start until they are five or six.

Lifespan

Greater flamingos are among the longest-lived birds. Ringing studies in the Camargue, running since the 1970s, have followed wild birds for several decades. In zoos, birds commonly live 50 years or more; Basel Zoo in Switzerland reports that captive greater flamingos can live over 60 years.

The oldest flamingo on record was a greater flamingo at Adelaide Zoo in Australia. Already an adult when it arrived in 1933, it was at least 83 years old when it died in 2014.

Predators, threats and conservation

Healthy adult greater flamingos have few natural predators, though eagles, jackals and other predators occasionally take them. Eggs and chicks are more vulnerable. In the Mediterranean, the yellow-legged gull is the main predator of eggs and chicks, and in Africa the marabou stork raids colonies.

The main threats come from people: drainage and development of wetlands, changes in water levels and salinity, pollution, disturbance of breeding colonies by people, boats and aircraft, and collisions with power lines. Because the birds depend on a small number of breeding sites, a single bad year at one colony can affect a large share of the regional population. Harsh cold spells can also kill many birds in southern France and Spain.

The IUCN Red List classes the greater flamingo as Least Concern. It has an enormous range and a large total population, and numbers in the western Mediterranean grew strongly in the late 20th century thanks to protection and managed nesting sites. In the Camargue, conservationists maintain an island in a salt lagoon where flamingos have nested since the 1970s, and colonies in Spain, Italy and Turkey are also protected.

Myths and facts

Myth: flamingos’ knees bend backward. The joint halfway down the leg is the ankle. The knee is higher up, hidden under the feathers.

Myth: flamingos are pink from birth. Chicks are gray, and young birds take years to become pink. The color comes from pigments in their food.

Myth: flamingos stand on one leg because they are tired. Resting on one leg seems to save body heat and takes little muscle effort. See why do flamingos stand on one leg?

Relationship with people

Greater flamingos are a symbol of the wetlands of southern Europe and a major draw for birdwatchers and nature tourism, from the Camargue to the Rann of Kutch, which holds one of the largest flamingo breeding sites in Asia. Their scientific name, roseus, simply means “rosy”. In many cities, such as Mumbai in India and Cagliari in Sardinia, flocks of flamingos feed within sight of busy streets, a reminder of how valuable coastal wetlands are.